Sophos today revealed the most prevalent malware threats and hoaxes causing problems for businesses around the world during May 2006.
The report, compiled from Sophos's global network of monitoring stations, reveals that the Netsky-P worm, first seen in March 2004, remains the most widespread piece of malware spreading via email. The family of Mytob worms are also causing multiple infections, with five variants appearing in the top ten.
Sophos identified 1,538 new threats in May, bringing the total of malware protected against to 122,634. The majority of the new threats (85.1%) were Trojan horses, while just 12.3% were worms or viruses.
The proportion of email which is virus infected has dropped considerably over the last year as hackers have turned from mass-mailing attacks to targeted Trojan horses. In May 2005, one in every 38 emails was infected, now this number is just one in 141.
"Netsky-P's strong position at the top of the chart shouldn't fool anyone into thinking that the malware problem is in the past. The threat environment is actually becoming much more sinister, as we see more targeted malware attacks use spyware technology to snoop upon individuals and businesses," said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos. "Businesses need to think more holistically about their IT defences. Anti-virus protection at both the gateway and the desktop must be accompanied by firewalls, regular security patch upgrades and safe computing best practice."
The top ten list of malware in May 2006 reads as follows:
(% = Percentage of Reports)
• 1 W32/Netsky-P 16.7%
• 2 W32/Zafi-B 11.4%
• 3 W32/Nyxem-D 7.5%
• 4 W32/Mytob-AS 6.3%
• 5 W32/Mytob-P 5.3%
• 5 W32/Mytob-M 5.3%
• 7 W32/Netsky-D 3.7%
• 8 W32/MyDoom-O 3.6%
• 9 W32/Mytob-FO 2.9%
• 10 W32/Mytob-C 2.1%
Others 35.2% |
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